Alex My Art Spinner

by Alex Toys

Product Features

• Make fun splatter paint pictures just like at the fair!
• You choose the colors and let your Art Spinner do the rest
• Use your works of art to make cards, tags, frames and more!
• Make fantastic works of art with a few drops of paint
• Includes spinner, 5 bottles of paint, cards and glitter

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 13 x 10 x 3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0002Q2O9C
• Item model number: 167W
• Manufacturer recommended age: 6 - 10 years
• Batteries: 1 C batteries required.
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,753 in Toys & Games (See Top 100 in Toys & Games)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Gear up and use a real battery powered machine to spin up a whole gallery of cool spintacular art. Create unique works by dripping paint onto the spinning plate. Kids can make cards, picture frames and wall art with 5 different colors of paint and gold and silver glitter, too.

$ bright colors of Spinner Paint

Spintacular works of art- unique every time.

The Art of Experimentation
A world of exploration and experimentation awaits your child as they try different techniques with My Art Spinner. What will happen if you drip more drops of paint? Less drops? Try dripping them closer together or farther apart. How do the different colors blend together? There is lots of paper included in the kit and each painting only takes a few seconds to make so feel free to make a ton and perfect your technique.

Unique Artwork Every Time
The fun of My Art Spinner is that each piece is completely unique, like a snowflake. No two will come out the same. Each Spin Art picture takes only seconds to make so you can really see how your actions create different results. Learn about centrifugal force in a creative and colorful way. It is magical to watch how the paint spins away from the center creating beautiful starbursts and splashes. Don't worry about messes- a splash guard is included.

Neat and Easy to Clean
Don't worry about messes- a splash guard is included. Just pop it on top of the machine before you get started and it will keep your work surface and clothes tidy. Clean up is a snap. Just wipe down the machine with a damp cloth or paper towel when you are finished. The spinning plate also detaches for easy clean up.

What's In The Box?
Comes with My Art Spinner machine, 5 bottles of paint (.6 fl oz/ 18 ml each), 20 black and white cards, gold and silver glitter, splash shield and easy instructions. Requires 1”C” (LR-14) battery, not included.

So many projects you can make with My Art Spinner!

Product Description

Spinning Art is a blast with this art spinner kit. Make fantastic works of art with just a few drops of paint. Place black or white paper on the platform, turn My Art Spinner on, and drizzle paint from above. Drips and drops make beautiful art. Includes: Art Spinner, splash shield, five bottles of paint, 20 black and white cards, gold and silver glitter, plus easy instructions. Requires one "C" battery (not included).

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent art spinner with few flaws., February 2, 2011

By 

Steven A. Godun "sgodun" (North Brunswick, NJ) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

= Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Alex My Art Spinner (Toy)

Santa gave this to my almost-four year old daughter last Christmas and it rapidly became the hit of the season. When I was her age I had a similar art spinner, though mine was a third-generation hand-me-down that never worked exactly right. Even so, it was one of my favorites too. :-)

Out of the box you get the spinner itself, five bottles of paint, two small bottles of glitter, a bunch of cards (both small and large), a plastic "splash ring" (more on that later), and the requisite instruction guide. Installation is very simple; remove one screw to access the battery compartment, insert one "C" cell, close it up, insert a card, set the splash ring in place, turn it on and get to painting. The card is held in place by the four corners, each slipping into a little nub on the green spinning platform. There are eight such nubs on the platform, four to accommodate each card size.

The main unit is about the size of a notebook and is somewhat cheap feeling, but has withstood a month of fairly regular use with no complaints. the base structure of the unit is purple with the accents (wheel, motor cover, power switch) in lime green. A beefy built-in handle allows the unit to be carried by the child. The power switch is located in the opening between the handle and base which means accidental power-ons will be pretty much nonexistent. The green spinning platform is held in place by a single center pin via friction and it works well. Given sufficient and appropriate pressure you can remove the platform without damage which makes cleanup easy.

The main unit has five built-in receptacles to hold paint and glitter. Here's my first complaint; there are five bottles of paint provided, but only three receptacles for them. Why? I can sort of understand if there were four receptacles; the child would naturally be using one bottle and would simply swap one bottle as needed. But three? I see no logic there, only laziness. They did manage to get the number of receptacles for the glitter correct, however.

Another minor complaint: Alex Toys clearly expects this to be a portable toy, given the fact that there is a built-in carrying handle. However, the receptacles for the paint and glitter don't hold the bottles tight enough to actually be portable. They fall right out as soon as the toy is lifted. What's the deal here, Alex Toys? (TIP: I was able to overcome this by putting little Velcro dots at the bottom of each receptacle, with the mating Velcro dot at the bottom of each bottle. For the two paint bottles that have no receptacles I attached Velcro to the sides of two of the paint bottles and to the flatter sides of the unit, so the paint bottle stays attached there when not in use.)

The paints are reasonable consistency, have good opacity, and mix well into one another to create different colors. Rather than the standard fare primary colors that you find in most children's paint sets, these colors are more reminiscent of those glow-in-black-light posters you'd find at places like Spencer gifts, an effect not diminished by the fact that some of the supplied cards are black on one side. Supplied colors include blue, pink, green, red and yellow. The included glitter is standard gold and silver, each in a small vial that looks absolutely nothing like a crack vial from the 80's so don't even think about that. The paints are in non-refillable bottles so you have two options when they run out: Fork over $15 (yes, more than 50% the cost of the whole toy!) for the My Art Spinner Refill kit, or get creative with refilling the empty bottles. A small syringe and some lightly watered down finger paint will work to refill the empties. You'll need to experiment with paint consistency to get it right though; too thin and it will spray everywhere when trying to paint, too thick and it won't give you that nice radial-splay look you're going for. Note that the official refill kit doesn't include glitter, but it's just plain ol' glitter that you can get at any craft store anyway. For replacement cards you can use the refill kit, or you can just cut down some suitable card stock. Semi-glossy paper seems to work best.

Battery life is very good with one "C" cell battery easily lasting a month of near-daily use with no noticeable fade on motor power. The motor is quiet too, virtually inaudible at a distance of about five feet. One small annoyance about the motor is that it has virtually zero torque. I recognize the necessity of this in order to keep children's fingers safe, but the trade-off is that you pretty much can't use anything other than drip paints in your creations. Try to use, say, a magic marker on the spinning card and the motor will instantly slow down to a crawl as it tries to overcome the pressure of the marker. I had similar results with even a small paint brush and watercolor paints.

The "splash ring" is a special case. It sits on top of the base and keeps paint splatter (outside of the unit) to a minimum. In practice, splatter is pretty much nonexistent provided your artist doesn't go nuts with the paint so the splash ring does its job nicely. The problem is that the ring is really, really, REALLY cheap clear plastic. At first glance it looks exactly like a piece of packing material that you'd throw away, and in fact I did exactly that when I first unpacked it. Alex Toys would seem to agree with this because there's a sticker on the ring that says that it's part of the toy and not packing material. After just one too-quick tug by my daughter part of the ring broke - not enough to make it useless, but it was annoying nonetheless. Clearly, this is a toy piece that is in need of a serious redesign.

Cleanup is generally easy. When wet the paint wipes off easily with a little soap and water or glass cleaner. When dry, it acquires a slightly rubbery feel and can be peeled off the plastics with a minimum of effort. For more severe cleaning a trip to the kitchen sink provides a good cleaning environment. It's important to note that the paint dries fairly quickly, and when dry the paint is fairly permanent on porous surfaces like clothes and carpeting. When wet you can quickly soak it and scrub it and get 98% of it out, but once it's dry you pretty much have to live with a stain.

Overall, this is an excellent toy with just a few quicks and shortcuts that make it a little annoying, but not annoying enough where I wouldn't recommend it to other parents (and kids).

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun for all ages!, May 29, 2008

By 

Ohio Girl "Moms just want to have fun!!" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

= Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Alex My Art Spinner (Toy)

I highly recommend it especially for the low Amazon sale price! My 6 year old daughter and 4 year old son both love it, want to do more and more art with it and both have a very easy time operating it and they get beautiful results every time. Even my 1 1/2 year old son loves watching it work. I even have fun doing it and we will definitely use our art to make cards for family/friends or just hang up and enjoy. The only drawback is it is a little time consuming peeling off the paint from the unit after it has dried already, but hey, there's cleanup involved w/ any art project so it's to be expected. I read on another review that the paint stains fabric, but I didn't find that the paint flies around too much, so none of us got any paint on our clothing. Also, I like the paint they include since is dries really nice and doesn't crack/peel like other cheap children's craft paint. Buy it and enjoy! :-)

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun and easy, December 29, 2007

By 

Karl Radke - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Alex My Art Spinner (Toy)

Kids love it and it's easy to set up and a minor challenge to clean with dye-fast colors. The colors DO NOT come out of clothing so I'd recommend getting a different type of base for the pigments when dealing with this toy. It takes up little space and clean-up is pretty easy. Overall, we love it.